Well, if one chooses to speak out, put on some tough skin because response to criticism is not loving or kind or compassionate. There is a new "believer" trying to shut me down and I am having none of it. My intention is to offend those who cross over the border into my territory, which means the absurd stuff going on about women and their sexuality and their "place".

Oh! I am going to go have a nice cup of coffee with a fresh berry cobbler in the garden. Wish you could join me. Coffee and cobbler all around for everyone on this string.

Indeed I would love to join you, and not for the cobbler (I have a belly only a Michelin would envy) -- oh, what the hell, like Orson Welles, I only have one vice left: the one that shows. And by Jove, I've earned it, so pass the pie. No, seriously, I think I could talk endlessly with you about women's rights. I think it's great that many women now join the minorities and lgbt people in realizing that if one person's rights are in jeopardy, all our rights are in jeopardy. That simple realization gave me a whole new way of looking at women.

James, you comment gave me shivers. I remember my mother, aunts and grandmothers and their terrible fits of depression and anxiety. No one helped them. No one recognized the unseen wounds of sexist attitudes. As I remember them, I cry out of frustration that these wonderful, generous, compassionate, hard working women faced tyranny from those they loved.

Thankfully, you, and many other men recognize wounds that would not heal, and also learned that you have better living conditions when not confronted with angry, hurt, depressed women.

Yes, yes, yes! I have said, for many years now, that when anyones rights are curtailed, it affects everyones rights. We all suffer. Thank you for stating it again. It needs to be shouted from the mountaintops, repeatedely. Until all understand. It is very selfish of me to think this way, because when I'm standing up for others, ultimately I am standing up for me. And I always do the selfish thing for me, as most of us do. ;).

Thanks, Tony. My favorite saying, appended to my business emails, is one from Benito Juarez the Lincoln Era revolutionary Mexican president. It so happens that he and Abe were snail mail correspondents (oops!, better make that burro mail). I don't know if the saying was in a letter to Lincoln, but it would have been superfluous, as it was said by Lincoln in different words. It is very simple: "Respect for the rights of others is peace." Now that I think about it, Gandhi might have said it, too. Or Martin Luther King. All of them are my heroes.

@Sarah Walton: This sort of reminds me of the scene in Casablanca where the police commandant (and frequenter of the bar) cracks: "I'm shocked! I say, shocked that gambling [homophobia] is going on in this establishment [counry]!" I hope you are not saying you actually saw the "GOD HATES FAGS" and did not conclude the Church was for real, all too real. These cretins crawl out of the woodwork at the most illogical places: military funerals "because the armed forces allow gays and lesbians" This sort of agit prop was at the time that gay people had to keep in the closet: Just imagining the WBC'S post-DADT repeal is beyond the combined imaginations of Bosch, Dali, and Bunuel. If current scientific evidence is accepted (despite the silly woman in the photo above), Freudian theory was right all along. The great man said that people project unwanted personal tendencies onto others. Homophobic people are actually more likely to be gay. Phred Phelps must be the biggest closeted cocksucker in the universe.